Looking for help on how to install recessed soffit.

Hello,

I am about to have a new roof installed on my house, before it’s done I wanted to repaint my house, soffits, fascia. The house is now painted, but as I began to scrape, prime, repaint the fascia, I decided I’d rather remove the soffits and install vinyl or aluminum vented soffits to allow more airflow into the attic. And, I figured I’d might as well install aluminum fascia as well; I think it would be faster and easier that scraping and repainting.

One issue I am running into is how to install the soffits. I have never done this before, but I am fairly handy so I do not think it would be too difficult. Most of the soffits installs I see in literature and the internet, are installed flush to the bottom of the fascia; nailed or screwed to the underneath of the fascia, which is then hidden by the installation of aluminum fascia. My current soffits are recessed, so to install J channel into the current nailing strips would be difficult. I could install F channel, and screw them into the wall, and then flush mount them as instructed, but I kinda like the recessed look of them; my shingles are cement so I can’t nail or they would shatter. If I install them recessed, then the aluminum fascia will not disguise or cover the new soffit. One possible solution I thought of was installing fascia twice, once on the inside, to which I could install the J or F channel to. Then after I install the soffits, I can install the second fascia on the outside .

Does any of this make sense? Is anyone familiar with how this is normally done? I do not have any 90 turns on my eaves, they all terminate at the end of the runs, no returns to the rake or peaks.

Attached is a pic of what they currently look like.

Any help or advice is greatly appreciated.

P.S. How do you get around the electrical service entrance?

Thank you,

Snoopy

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Looking for help on how to install recessed soffit.

Where's the soffit vents?
Might want to concider hiring this one out. Reason being in order to do it your going to need a brake, seaming tools. A brake is a $1500.00 tool.
Since soffit material is about 3/4" thick your going to loose that recess area anyway I'd skip the idea of trying to keep it.
How wide is that soffit?
I would measure the depth of the recess and add that thickness of material down the middle of the over hang to reduce the chance of sagging and then F moulding againt the wall. The fashia material holds up the outside edge.

For a far better look you could used beaded hidden vent soffit and vinyl cove moulding made by Certinteed.

I have not seen alumium soffit material used in many years. Pretty much all vinyl now. If you do find it you need to use aluminum nails to hold it up.

Your also going to have to call the power company to do what's called a dropped line. They kill the power long enough to work around the incoming power line.

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Looking for help on how to install recessed soffit.

First, the vents are there, they're just not in the photo. If the run is twenty feet, there may only be two 6x12 vents in the soffit. That is why I wanted to install vented "vinyl" soffit on the whole run. I am having a charcoal shingle roof installed and I assume the attic will become hotter than the current grey shingle roof makes it.

I intended on using "aluminum" fascia material. The fascia supplied by home depot appears to be pre-bent into an L ( http://www.homedepot.com/buy/amerima...l#.UEZE7VLPbTo ), so I assumed that I could just trim it to fit, slide it behind my gutters, and up beneath the drip edge, etc... Of course I may be underestimating how difficult the job is. If I need a brake, I can rent one locally for $50/day, $150/wk.
I am paying about $9K to have my roof torn off and replaced, which includes some bathroom vents, and a light tube. When I asked to have the soffits replaced and the fascia wrapped it jumped to $15K. They were just going to use a hole cutter in the current wooden fascia to pop some holes in it, then go over the current soffits with new stuff. I thought that that was not enough; I wanted max ventilation. I had decided on scraping the old paint , priming, repainting, but that is taking a lot of time and a lot of work… so I thought, could I do the soffit install and fascia wrap myself.

Thanks for your advice on stopping the electrical service, I did not know that was an option.